Sugar nucleotides, properly referred to as glycosyl esters of nucleoside pyrophosphates, are of central importance in the metabolism of carbohydrates. Methods for their chemical synthesis are limited in the sense that all published procedures require the glycosyl phosphate as one component. We propose here a new method based on the reaction between the appropriate sugar orthoester and a nucleoside pyrophosphate. The synthesis of some sugar nucleotide analogs, glycosyl phosphoryl nucleosides, from the sugar orthoester and a nucleoside monophosphate is also discussed.